Starbucks, that lovable, local mom-n’-pop coffee shop, goes through literally ‘uge amounts of coffee every day. Instead of chucking the used coffee grounds away to waste space in a landfill, they fill up 5-pound bags and let you take the grounds home to help out your compost and/or garden! How boss is that?

As an added moneysaver, you can rebrew some coffee with the old grounds! Enjoy your free weak brew as you chuckle at the thought of ever paying for coffee again!

The nitrogen from the used coffee grounds is a real kickstarter for your compost and garden. Nitrogen is a major fertilizer for crops, and your plants will react to it much as Popeye reacts to spinach.

It’s worth noting that TOO much nitrogen can cause nitrogen burn in your plants, so I don’t recommend planting your garden in pure coffee grounds. If you do though, and it works, let me know, por favor!

The one bad thing about this program is Starbucks doesn’t reuse their bags. I have no idea why; they’re pretty durable, and they’re basically just putting trash in them. C’mon Starbucks, take that next step and reuse the bags if people bring them in!

So next time you’re trudging past a Starbucks, stop in and see if they have any of their big bags of used coffee grounds. Tell them EcoJoe sent you, they’ll know what you’re there for.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, who knows a thing or two about natural resources, says that if every U.S. household replaced just one roll of paper towels with a roll of 100% recycled paper towels, it would save over half a million trees every year!

Such an easy way to save tons of trees! So next time you’re out and about and feel the need for some paper towels, look for 100% recycled ones.

Better yet, use good ol’ reusable cloth rags to clean up messes, and cut down on all that paper towel waste.

If you want to take it to the Eco Hero level, reuse old t-shirts as cleaning cloths. You’ll be saving money AND helping the environment. Now that’s what I’m talking ’bout.

Do you put off flushing your old-timey toilet, dreading the inevitable waste of water as gallons and gallons of good clean water are used by your old, inefficient terlet? But buying a new, high efficiency toilet just seems out of your budget?

Amigo, I think I have the solution. If you live in Durham, North Carolina, keep on reading. If not, contact your local municipality or city and see if they have a similar program.

The City o’ Durham is running a Toilet Rebate Program, wherein they’ll give you a $100 credit for every old, inefficienct toilet that you replace with a WaterSense-approved, high-efficiency toilet.

Righto, so a little while ago, I built me a homemade water barrel out of a trash can and assorted odds n’ ends. The only thing left to do was attach the barrel to my gutters to collect all that free rain water.

It turned out to be pretty easy to do, and I’ve been enjoying free rain water for my garden ever since, saving money and cutting down on my city-water usage. Bah-blam.

Today we take the focus off of the environment and being eco-friendly to focus on saving money. Why, you may ask? Mainly because I’m hosting this week’s Festival of Frugality. In fact, here is a link to their home web page.